Loose Leaf Notes

1. I was recently typing the name of my book of poems, Muses Like Moonlight, and typed "Mooses Like Moonlight" by mistake.

2. Written on the inside on my latest notebook: Note to self – in writing.

3. I can understand why my youtube video of the Hokie Wave Cheer at the Dave Matthews and John Meyer concert at VA Tech has gotten nearly 2,000 hits. What I don’t understand is why THIS video has gotten almost as many.

4. I wasn’t kidding about getting drunk on the aroma of apple blossoms while visiting an orchard on the Parkway HERE. The next day I even had a hangover from breathing all that pollen.

5. I was sipping tea on the front porch today when a cloud of pollen that looked like smoke passed by. It caused me to question for a second whether I was crazy enough to have lit the wood stove and forgot. I didn’t think so because it was nearly 80 degrees.

6. Mara says we need to bring some mud to our next spoken word night. Her idea was prompted by reading Tom Ryan’s latest issue of The Floyd Enquirer, in which he reported this: A full contact mud wrestling poetry slam has been scheduled for the title “High Priestess of Poetry”. The crowd favorite seems to be Mara “Drama-O-Rama” Robbins but the smart money is split between Colleen “Soul Crusher” Redman & Katherine “TeaTime” Chantal.

7. And about Floyd Fest, there was this Tomfoolery by Tom: It was nice to see that Kris & Erika were able to negotiate a “non-presence” of the Federal Interdiction Anti-Fun Force at this year’s festival (Floyd Fest). I was a little taken aback, however, to learn of the myriad compromises they made in reaching that accord. Changing the festival theme from “A Family Affair” to “A Family Values Affair” was bad enough but allowing Pat Robertson to M.C. and letting Dick Cheney sit in with Donna The Buffalo to perform “Ubber Deutschland” are bound to have a chilling effect on the festivals ambiance. I guess I can learn to live with these concessions but I was aghast at The National Rifle Association becoming the primary sponsor & forcing all staff to wear “Don’t Inhale” T-shirts. You can read the full online tell-all HERE.

8. A real 9/ll Call: "We made brownies and I think we’re dead.” More of this hilarity is HERE.

9. Michael Moore on Larry King talking about Obama’s relationship with Reverend Wright: Jeez, you know, I mean I go to Mass still. I'm a practicing Catholic. I've been that way all my life. But if I had -- if I had gotten up every time I heard a priest from the pulpit in my travels around the country say things like I've heard them say, that birth control is a sin, that women should not be priests, that women should have a different role in church ... I would have been walking out so much -- that would have been so much aerobic activity for me ... I wouldn't look like this.

10. In the nearly three years I’ve been doing Thirteen Thursday, I actually forgot it was Thursday once and posted on Friday. My excuse: “I thought yesterday was Wednesday, which would make today Thursday, but of course it’s really Friday. Everybody says so."

11. Have you seen the human clock? It runs continuously and changes ever moment with photo scenes people have sent in from around the world telling the time.

12. Also from my Thirteen Thursday on Friday: "I’ve always been fascinated by the group mind that humans share, which causes us to agree about certain things like what day of the week it is, or to stay in our own lane on the right side of the road while driving down a highway. What would happen if we completely dropped out and forgot these collective agreements?"

13. In August 2006 I wrote this: “I think of blogging as rapid fire target practice. Doing it daily, I can't help but improve my writer's aim, but sometimes my arm gets tired!” Hey, I guess that means I should have carpal tunnel by now.

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Posted by Colleen at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)

1. New motto for my overbooked husband: "No" is a complete sentence.

2. Handwritten on the inside cover of my book of Mary Oliver’s poems: The poet’s answer to Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings.

3. Seen on a Get Well Greeting Card at the Pharmacy: “Don’t worry – Stressed is just Desserts spelled backwards.”

4. Flamingos remind me of long legged ballerinas in pink tutus.

5. I have never played pool but I play in the pool. I like the 8 beach ball the best.

6. It was so cold the other day that I had to start a fire in the wood stove. While crumpling newspaper, I noticed a Washington Post photo of the Pope’s red shoes. The caption beneath it said, “There’s no place like Rome: Pope Benedict XVI arriving at Andrews Air Force Base with his ruby red slippers, rumored to be Prada.”

7. I was so jealous.

8. Best quote about the Pope’s red shoes came from a woman in Central Park: “He’s got big shoes to fill and the red shoes are just the ticket to do that.” There’s also a song about them HERE.

9. Funny how the pope’s hat is almost like a wizard’s and a wizard’s hat is the same as a dunce’s.

10. A witch’s hat and church steeple also have a point in common.

11. HERE’S my blog friend Rick Mullen reading his poem, “The Chelsea,” from his newly published chapbook “Aquinas Flinched.”

12. My shoes aren’t red but my last name is.

13. My favorite burgundy silk pajamas were recently spotted HERE.

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here. #131

Posted by Colleen at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (24)

1. Black tea is like whiskey to herb tea’s wine.

2. I don’t like chocolate for the sake of it. For me, chocolate is like a condiment to go with mint, peanut butter, ice cream, or cherries.

3. I never had a baby shower or wedding shower. But I do love baths.

4. I have an imaginary green shamrock tattoo somewhere on my body, haven’t imagined where yet.

5. Emily Dickinson’s version of making the sign of the cross (In the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost) is: “In the name of the Birds, the Bees, and the Breeze,” (taught to me by a monk in South Carolina).

6. I talked to my friend Jayn (turning 60 this year) on the phone; it had been awhile. She said, “My life has been so full.” I answered, “Yeah, and we get full faster than we used to.

7. Last Sunday night Joe and I went dancing to the Emily Brass Band at the Pine Tavern. We slept in late the next morning. When we woke up, I said to him, “Joe, it’s Monday. Do you know where your job is?”

8. Interesting fact heard on David Letterman: 95% of people texting and blogging who type LOL are actually NOT laughing out loud.

9. Upsetting use of adversity in TV advertising heard recently: Stop global warming or all the Reese’s Cups will melt.

10. Not only did I used to love Led Zepplin’s song “Ramble On” when I was a teenager, I also drove a Rambler. Does anyone remember those?

11. I’ve decided to name my computer “The Enterprise,” and think of my work station as the “bridge,” although I’m more of a nutty professor in a word lab than a Captain Kirk exploring outer space.

12. Today I love the word “warp,” as in warp drive, warp speed, and warp spasm; and when I googled an image search for “warp,” I got THIS!”

13. If celebrities moved to Oklahoma HERE.

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Posted by Colleen at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (30)

1. Tongue twister created after I played AI (a three legged sloth) twice in one Scrabble play, which caused Mara to squeal, “Two three legged sloths … Two three legged sloths … Two three legged sloths.”

2. When I tried to say “two three legged sloths” three times fast, it kept coming out as something ending with “sluts,” which reminded Mara of the bar drink she had when we were in Lexington, called “a redheaded slut.”

3. “The bees are disappearing, independent bookstores are closing, and they’re selling botox on TV to women in their 30’s!” I recently ranted to my friend Alwyn over the phone.

4. When I played the word QUEUE in our last Scrabble game, Mara and Rosemary broke out in song, singing, “Q-U-E-U-E whatever will be will be … the future’s not ours to see … Q-U-E-U-E.

5. Favorite quote from Claudia Emerson’s VPI Poetry Symposium keynote address: Sometimes the line will agree with the sentence and sometimes the sentence will argue with the line.

6. Joe and I tend to argue about stuff like whether something is purple or blue, or is that blue and green?

7. When it comes to my bad back it’s more about what I don’t do than what I do. In other words, less sitting and more moving.

8. I dream in fiction.

9. Last night I dreamt of blogger Michele Agnew (of Meet and Greet fame). She had a new blog, designed from an online survey she took. The details were posted on a bulletin board at the New Mountain Mercantile, here in Floyd. I was in there picking up my farm eggs and was telling someone that I knew her. I had a bicycle outside and was on my way to Christiansburg, but then it started to rain. When I woke up I was trying to figure out how to get home to get my car without getting wet (I live 7 miles from town).

10. While doing some research on local blues musician, Scott Perry, who was quoted in my story about the arts in Floyd, I discovered he has written a song called Floyd County Rag. Here.

11. My mind just went blank. Then I thought of the T-shirt my son Josh brought home from London that said “Mind the Gap,” taken from signs at the London Underground. In this country the underground is called the subway and our signs read, “Watch Your Step.” My T-shirt should probably say “Mind the Lapse.”

12. Some Mind Game architecture HERE and HERE.

13. Winter Tax Refunded in the Spring (AKA The Audit): In April I calculate poetry … the way others do their taxes … as though the world were overdue for a good accounting … Bursting to put into words … what the birds already know … with each emerging daffodil … I mark spring’s growing windfall … Its affluent bloom … and excess of green are annual assets … we all get to claim.

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here. #129

Posted by Colleen at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (25)

1. Seeing poets Bruce Weigl and Claudia Emerson together at the VMI Poetry Symposium last weekend was as cool as seeing James Taylor and Carole King together in concert back in the 70’s.

2. Over the two-day symposium weekend there was a humorous discussion between Mara and me about the difference between pulpit and podium. The subject of punctuation and poetry also surfaced and took the form of a heated debate after Claudia Emerson spoke of the importance of it in her keynote address.

3. But William Carlos Williams, who Claudia mentioned in her address, often didn’t use punctuation, and Emily Dickinson, who Claudia named as one of her poet heroes, used liberal dashes of various sizes dashes, some of which editors took out after she died when they were adding punctuation.

4. As one who doesn’t use much punctuation in my poetry I’m a minority in the crowd, riding in the back of the bus: And in the end I’m like Rosa Parks … I don’t want to get up and go where I’m told … I work just as hard as any other poet … and I write from where I sit. More HERE.

5. How gullible are you? A test guaranteed to make you laugh HERE.

6. After Bruce Weigl's and (Pulitzer Prize winning poet) Claudia Emerson’s readings and during the question and answer period, a student referred to Bruce as famous, to which Bruce quickly responded, saying that he was not famous, expect for high school, where he was famous for some things he did in sports.

7. I’ve been having a hard time reading the notes I took at the symposium, but I was able to make out this, said by Weigl about the Iraq War: “Sacrifice and slaughter are not the same thing.” He also said this about his Vietnam War service: “The war made me stupid and only good enough to clean windows.”

8. I love that Claudia openly admits that she was a hippie living out the country with woodstove heating and no electricity. Her current husband is a long haired musician who reminds me of David Crosby and looks like he’d fit well in Floyd, which is Mara’s and my latest fantasy (after the one about Sy Safransky, editor of The Sun Magazine, falling in love with Mara).

9. Last year at Floyd Fest, we drove to and from THIS poetry performance in what we were calling the poetry bus (see above photo).

10. The one driving the poetry bus gets to decide if poetry should be punctuated or not.

11. Most interesting keyword search at Loose Leaf Notes this week that made me wonder what the searcher was thinking and which of the two words they really meant when they misspelled: “how to get a “viginia” loose.”

12. A poem I wrote about fishing, posted here just so the title makes sense: Poems so short … I throw them back … but they nibble again … to break my heart … “There’s other fish in the sea” I tell them.

13. Someone once asked me to write a poem about a button. This is my button poem, always a good poem to close a reading or a 13 Thursday list with: I should know by now … how to button my lip … just go zip … and close it.

Thirteen Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.

Posted by Colleen at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)

1. On April fool’s day I wrote this fake news story: A fool resembling Donald Trump announced on April 1st that Thursday had been fired. People in board rooms across America were stunned at the turn of events and feared the lost revenue that would ensue. CEOs scrambled to book Friday, which overflowed into Saturday, and bloggers who play Thirteen Thursday didn’t know what to do with themselves.

2. My egg man, Ed, called me from town Monday morning to say that he couldn’t drop off my farm fresh eggs at the New Mountain Mercantile because a criminal was loose in the county and the Mercantile, among other places, was locked down. “Is it really that bad?” I asked him. “I’m not worried. I have eggs. If I see him I’ll throw them,” he answered.

3. A rude awakening: The growth in Floyd over the past several years has its pros and cons. I was recently parked in the new (full) downtown parking lot in between two other cars and instinctively locked my car door, thinking I was in Christiansburg. It’s the first time that has happened.

4. My friend Katherine and I talked about meeting early so we could have some time to catch up before we headed to our writer’s circle on Sunday, but by the time I pulled up her driveway, I had this to say. “My idea of being early is not being late.”

5. When I was a girl I was very curious about things like the Immaculate Conception and the quick brown fox that jumped over the lazy dog.

6. At the time, I didn’t understand the significance of such a strange sentence or why I was made to write it out over and over in Penmanship class. Now I know that the phrase is a pangram, a sentence that contains all the letters of the alphabet. Besides being used to practice penmanship it was used to test the letters on a typewriter.

7. This is a first: I’ve been given a blog award by Claudia from On a Limb for being “Mountain Sexy.”

8. At a red light in Christiansburg, watching a young man saunter across the street, I thought to myself, ‘Imagine having nothing better to do but develop and perfect a cool walk.’

9. THIS is what I hear when I walk to mailbox. Can you guess what it is?

10. Favorite word of the week: Conniption. I remembered it after Deana said something about a “hissy fit.”

11. Found while I was picking up my award from Claudia: After 7 years and 500 interviews, a two hour presentation on the secrets of success is presented in 3 minutes HERE.

12. I couldn’t help notice that he went over 3 minute time limit. If he was at a poetry slam, points would be deducted.

13. I’m going to a Poetry Symposium this weekend with my Scrabble playing poet friend Mara, who is a student at Hollins University and will be presenting poetry and a paper. Soon I’ll be blogging from a front row seat at VMI, a great way to ring in National Poetry month.

Post notes: Ironically, my blog was down for two hours this morning and so, as far as I'm concerned, Thursday was almost canceled. Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.

Posted by Colleen at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (30)

1. Have you ever thought of getting a “13” tattoo, taking a picture of it and using it for a Thirteen Thursday header?

2. According to THIS test (compliments of Kenju), I’m 76% addicted to blogging.

3. If that isn’t bad enough, I think I’m even more addicted to online research. After typing number 1 in this list, I searched around and found out that there is a place called Lucky 13 Tattoo in Richmond, Virginia, another Lucky 13 Tattoo in Vermont, a 13 Tattoo in Brazil and an Old Thirteen Tattoo place in Los Angeles. There’s also a Lucky 13 Hairdressers Salon.

4. Our names are our assignments: Last week while doing some research on autism and vaccines, I came across a doctor named “Pangborn.” He works with autistic children, but I couldn’t help but think maybe he missed his calling and should have been an obstetrician.

5. Then I found THIS, a story called “Calling These Doctors by Their Callings,” about a surgeon named Chop, a Psychiatrist named Dr. Looney, and doctors named Dr. Hurt and Dr. Payne. There was mention of an eye doctor named Dr. Blinder and one named Dr. Seemore. Which one would you choose?

6. Dick Cheney must be pulling our chain (no comment on his first name). Last week when Martha Radditz said to him in an interview, “Two-thirds of Americans say it (the war) is not worth fighting,” he said, “SO?” Then he went on to tell her how well the war was going. Can anyone watch THIS without cringing?

7. I should have bought stock in THESE notebooks. through a few and whenever I really like something and go back to buy more, I find they have gone out of style.

8. Besides being a beachnick and 1960’s peacnick, I’m a Meet and Greetnick. Meet Michele HERE.

9. I just found out that the poems we all wrote last week using the words in our last Café Scrabble game are going to be used by Mara in creative writing class assignment on “procedural poems” at Hollins University. I guess I was taking my turn when she explained it.

10. At first the Literacy Volunteer Scrabble Tournament that I wrote about HERE reminded me of a Contra Dance. There were five long lines of five round tables like contra dance lines and partners and neighbors holding hands four in a circle. Not only that, a literacy volunteer was up on the stage calling the rules that I was struggling to understand.

11. My son Josh got me into Contra Dancing when he was a teenager. I love to dance but being left/right dyslexic, it was difficult for me to learn. There are active and inactive dancers who move up the dance hall in different directions. There’s counting steps, and spinning and dosey doeing left or right. I remember being confused and complaining that it was too much like algebra, but when your teenaged son says, “Mom, you’re gonna love this,” and he wants you to learn it and he’ll dance with you when you do, you’ll make the effort to.

12. Today is my niece’s birthday, and she has a blog. You can go over and wish here a happy birthday HERE, and she'll tell you how old she is.

13. Strangest keyword searches that brought people to Loose Leaf this week: flamingo sympathy card, leprechaun on the loose, 5 biggest lies Bush told us about iraq, and what are the 13 colleens. The funniest part is that I know exactly why they landed folks here.

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.

Posted by Colleen at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (27)

1. Said to my friend Rosemary at Spoken Word Night while holding my amber Anchor Steam up to the light: “I think it’s funny that I love tea and beer and they’re both the same color, which makes me wonder if it’s really the color I love.”

2. Last weekend Joe had to take a porch vacation on his own. Not only was I working – providing support for an individual with disabilities – it was spoken word weekend, AND I went to TWO baby showers (the last one I went to before these two was probably 30 years ago).

3. The Charlie’s Angels of Scrabble Poetry mission, assigned by Mara and called “Procedure for Scrabble Poem,” had four of us who played on Monday writing poems from the words we played, most of which can be read HERE.

4. And this little stanza used up five of the Scrabble words we played: Heat up the leftovers … Serve them to a foe… Turn war into warm … Edit bet into better … and id into idea …

5.Click HERE to fall in love with kaleidoscopes and flowers.

6. I find it nearly impossible to look in the mirror without tilting my head. I have no idea why. So said “Internal Monoblog,” quoted Blogations.

7. You should see the face I make when I’m putting on eye makeup. I try not to do it because it’s sort of a bug-eyed frown but I can’t seem to break the habit.

8. Remember when you fed your babies oatmeal and you opened your own mouth as if you were the one eating?

9. With one in every 150 children being diagnosed with autism, we should be talking about the cumulative effect that so many vaccines could be having on our children. We know antibiotics save lives, but their overuse has created resistant super bugs and the emergence of deadly infections like MRSA. Why is there no public debate about the overuse of immunizations? Read the rest of my commentary, published Monday in the Roanoke Times HERE.

10. Only in Floyd: A recent ad I received for the April issue of The Museletter(our homespun local newsletter), reads “There is a riot in my barn. You are invited. Bring the children and come see 10 baby goats jump and twist in the air, play king of the mountain on an old radiator, or just nurse and snuggle. Just call-the tour is free.”

11. Even though a number of Americans are still confused by the Bush administration’s rhetoric implying that Iraq played a role in 9/11 or had some connection to al Qaida, the world is not confused, so says a new bipartisan report : Thanks in part to the Iraq war, the next U.S. president — Republican or Democrat, black or white, man or woman — will take office with America's power, prestige and popularity in decline, according to bipartisan reports, polls and foreign observers. "Since 9/11, the United States has been exporting fear and anger rather than the more traditional values of hope and optimism. Suspicions of American power have run deep," Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state under Bush, and Joseph Nye, a Pentagon official under President Clinton, wrote in a December report published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Read the full article HERE.

12. I was recently relieved to be reminded that thinking is still a valuable commodity when I heard Wayne Dyer on PBS, explaining why he didn’t have to help his son register for college, say, “I’m a prophet. I get paid by the thought.”

13. My St. Patrick’s Day Scrabble poem using the words in our game ends like this: Color the blank tiles green … Aim the K in Patrick … on a triple letter score … and the Q in quean on the star … Free lookups for everyone …who can spell the sunshine back into the sky … who play to win more fun!

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.

Posted by Colleen at 8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)

1. I’ve come to accept that I’m never going to remember how to spell words like Renaissance and restaurant on my own, no matter how many times I write or type them.

2. Intriguing old Appalachian country names recently discovered and added to the list I keep: Men - Burnace, Vent, Talmadge, Enoch, and Elinos. Women – Effie, Colba, Hava, Arminda, and Hettie.

3. I keep wondering if my sons are related to Harold Copus, the private detective Dr. Phil’s uses for his show. He has the same last name as them and does bear a resemblance to their father’s family, who are English.

4. “Hello?” It was Mara. I said, “My answering machine is full so I was forced to answer the phone. It says FL which is either means FULL or Florida.” “It could mean Floyd,” she answered.

5. Can you fill THIS page without smiling?

6. As a lover of the ocean who grew up in a beach town in the 60’s and now lives in the mountains, I could be considered a peacenik beachnik.

7. I dreamt my son JOSH’s name while I was pregnant with him. It was spelled out in bold black magic marker. My youngest son is named DYLAN. We were living in Texas at the time and people there kept thinking it was Dillion, but I was thinking poets, Bob and Thomas.

8. A beachnick without a beach is like a beatnik who can’t write poetry.

9. Makes me want to cry: My first mother in law sent me THIS tribute to Paragon Park, the amusement park in the town I grew up in that was torn down in the early 80’s to make room for Condos. HERE is my blog post tribute.

10. Strange keyword search phrases that landed some people on my site this week: spark notes somewhere between life and death, I didn’t come all the way to loose poem keywords, birthday poems for grown sons, and maggots blown into yard on leaves

11. Joe was recently reading me something written by a psychologist named Havighurst. Of course, all I hear and all I can see when I look at that name is “Havinghurts," which seems an appropriate name for a psychologist.

12. Will pharmaceuticals be the new second hand smoke? The more people take drugs the more traces of them end up in the water the rest of us drink. What would George Orwell think?

13. Number 72 in my “100 Things About Me” says: I found my first 4 leaf clover at a library book sale, pressed between the pages of a book that cost 25 cents.” The name of the book was “What’s in a Name?”

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.

Posted by Colleen at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (36)

1. Look what was right under my nose. After seeing a yard full of plastic lawn flamingo and going back later to get a picture but finding they were gone, the following day I went to play scrabble and found these in the Cafe Del Sol window box doing THIS.

2. Flamingos are to the south what penguins are to the north.

3. I recently looked at youtube videos of flamingos the way I imagine some people get sucked into porn. I watched for much longer than I intended and felt dirty afterwards, learning that the birds are endangered, overcrowded in places, being shot at by some, and trained as exhibits in zoos.

4. Experienced counsel recently given to my overbooked husband on how to pace himself: “Do only what’s right in front of you. Take one step at a time,” I said. He answered, “Yeah, but the difference between me and you is that my legs are longer.”

5. A Fragment From my Friend Fred: Does it matter at all to you that the next president has a clue about the world beyond politics? If so, consider another candidate than John McCain. Let his record speak for itself. From the Sierra Club… Washington, D.C.–In the 2007 National Environmental Scorecard released today by the League of Conservation Voters, John McCain receives a score of ZERO. McCain was the only member of Congress to skip every single crucial environmental vote scored by the organization, posting a score lower than Members of Congress who were out for much of the year due to serious illnesses–and even lower than some who died during the term. By contrast, the average Member of Congress scored a 53 in 2007. McCain posts a lifetime score of only 24.

6. Floyd has an Earth Day website HERE.

7. I once said: “If no one is going to quote me, I’ll quote myself. Is that a quote?” Looks like somebody does want to quote me – and other bloggers too. See HERE.

8. I actually have a poem with the word flamingo in it: The birds are back … checking out the real estate … a high-rise nest … on my porch rafter … a one room shelter … inaccessible to cats … with southern exposure … and a landing deck … The rest, with the flamingo part is HERE.

9. Current favorite word, besides flamingo: rigamarole

10. Strangest spam message this week: Frankly, the way things are right now, I'm not sure I'd want to play myself in my very own movie of the week.

11. “Hello.” It was Mara. I said, “My answering machine is full so I was forced to answer the phone. It says FL which is either means FULL or Florida," I said to her. “It could mean Floyd,” she answered.

12. Recently said by Colleen to Joe: Life is just one big field trip that I’m taking good notes on.

13. Floyd’s Own American Idol. She made it to the top 50. Read more HERE.

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.

Posted by Colleen at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (29)

1. I was recently sick and hadn’t been out in over a week. I was beginning to think I should make a dentist appointment just to get out of the house.

2. Strangest thing recently seen: At a training this past Saturday,related to the work I do with adults with disabilities, I went to the bathroom at the break and saw an hourglass egg timer on the back of the toilet. I’m still curious about it.

3. I had a hard time sitting and paying attention for the four hour training so I doodled and worked on my teapoems, which reminded me of scribbling poetry on scraps of paper many years ago when I worked at a factory. I still remember writing this line then: Bob Dylan had the highway blues … he wore pointed shoes …and kept his guitar always loaded.

4. Sometimes I run my fingers across the keyboard and pretend that it’s a piano.

5. I’ve never played an instrument, unless you want to count the diggeredo, which is a long hollow bamboo instrument you blow into. It sounds something like the sound of blowing into a conch shell, unless you’re not doing it right and then it just sounds like farting.

6. I now have a Hewitt Packard Case Manager, a nice guy named John who sent me a new printer when my old one got fried even though my year warranty was expired by one day. I guess the company thinks I’m a special case, either that or they want to keep my buying their ink cartridges, which cost about as much to refill as the cost of the original printer.

7. This was my favorite Academy Award acceptance speech, given by Alex Gibney who won for his documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, about an Afghan taxi driver who was falsely imprisoned and then killed: Truth is, I think my dear wife Anne was kind of hoping I'd make a romantic comedy, but honestly, after Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary rendition that simply wasn't possible. This is dedicated to two people who are no longer with us, Dilawar, the young Afghan taxi driver, and my father, a navy interrogator who urged me to make this film because of his fury about what was being done to the rule of law. Let's hope we can turn this country around, move away from the dark side and back to the light.

8. I also liked Daniel Day Lewis’s acceptance speech for his best actor award. He began by thanking the academy for “whacking me with the handsomest bludgeon in town.” Then he said that his character “sprang like a golden sapling out of the mad beautiful head” of the movie’s writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson. Leave it to an Irishman to utter such poetry.

9. Classiest moment of the night: Although many of the thank you speeches were boring and I kept waiting for a streaker to liven things up, I loved it when host John Stewart brought best song co-writer back on the stage after a commercial break to say what she wanted to into the mic after the orchestra had initially cut her off.

10. Said with needles in my back to my acupuncturist: “I feel like a birthday cake.” I had just had moxa on my back (something like having a lit cigar held near your skin to improve the flow of energy) so was feeling a little lit up. “I’ll be back soon to blow you out,” my acupuncturist joked as he left the treatment room.

11. My poet friend Mara sent me THIS link to a ‘what kind of punctuation mark are you’ quiz. I came out a colon. “Well, at least it’s a committed form of punctuation, unlike the semi-colon,” I told her. And LOOK what Bonnie just posted on semi-colons. Seems you can get a lot of attention for using one correctly.

12. To celebrate Leap Year Brian Feldman, a performance artist from Florida, is going to do 366 12 foot leaps for 24 hours on February 29th.

13. Apparently, his blog is a performance piece as well.

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Posted by Colleen at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (34)

1. Valentine’s Day Morning: He replaced the belt on the vacuum cleaner for me. I left him a pink valentine bag on the kitchen table the night before with a card and a Sunkist naval orange inside. He responded by leaving me a conversation candy heart that said, “Call Me.”

2. When the phone rings, instead of cringing and thinking ‘who could be calling me now,’ I’ve decided to pretend it’s the citizens clearing house telling me I’ve won a million dollars. Even though I never signed up for the prize, I’ve decided to pretend it’s true because I want to change some of my habitual negative thought patterns and replace them with enthusiastic ones.

3. I spent a good part of Valentine’s Day sick in bed with the phone, going through my speed dial to tell the people on it that I loved them.

4. I only got as far as three calls, which was a big deal for me since I’m practically phone phobic.

5. I can trace my aversion to phones back to when I was a girl. When boys I liked would call to talk to me, I would sit on the other end of the line frozen with nothing to say. But not liking to talk on phones also runs in my family.

6. I don’t like watching sports either, unless my sons are playing in them.

7. I don’t use white sugar so I never have it in the house. But I collect sugar packets from gas stations and fast food places so I have some on hand for when company comes.

8. When we first moved into our Blue Ridge Parkway cabin, fifteen years ago, our neighbor actually asked to borrow a cup of sugar. My kids were mortified that we had no sugar to offer him. I tried to convince him to try honey. He’s never tried to borrow anything since.

9. A poem I wrote twenty five years ago that my sister Sherry, a nurse, hung on the bulletin board where she worked is called Remedy and goes like this: Take two poems … and a trip to the ocean … call me in the morning … Plenty of fluids … and funny business … 3 Hail Mary’s and a hug … Take lots of music … as you need it …dance 3X a day … follow your own directions … watch your children play … Now bless your stars and tell me something nice …. call me in the morning …or call me at night.

10. I used to preface things I wanted to remember with “Note to self.” Now I’m at the point where I have to say “Note to self … in writing.”

11. Joe calls up to the computer room at night where I’m working, “Are you almost done?” “I’ll be down in a minute. I’m just admiring my blog," I answer.

12. The “Call Me” conversation heart Joe left on the table on Valentine’s Day morning sounded more like THIS rather than THIS.

13. Candy hearts are to Valentines Day what candy corn is to Halloween. 13 Messages After the Beep are HERE.

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Posted by Colleen at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (21)

1. A haiku a day keeps the “roses are red violets are blue” blues away.

2. Where do poems come from? Some lines just come and you follow them. Others you have to dig.

3. I use to wonder when I’d be too old to sit on the sidewalk. Now I know it’s when you can’t get back up. I learned this recently while I was dealing with a bad back.

4. What I haven’t mentioned until now is that on the same day that Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama’s Roanoke speaking engagements were cancelled due to high winds, brush fires spreading, and the Roanoke airport closing, we had an electrical fire in our computer room caused by a broken lamp that was still plugged in and a surge of electricity. The fire alarm probably saved our house but the room is covered with a layer of white 9/11-like fire extinguisher dust and smells like a toxic waste dump.

5. I went to the Hillary pre-primary rally (which was ultimately cancelled) with my friend Mara. At first I was hesitant about going. I had to be reminded about the significance of Hillary being the first female candidate to get this far, and I was still upset about her vote for the Iraq war. But Mara knows how to get me to go anywhere with her. All she has to say is, “Don’t you want to blog about it?”

6. From Thirteen Thursday February 2005: My first act of guerilla graffiti with my new label gun was to print up labels on bright red tape saying “I love you” and then stick them on certain people’s briefcases, cars, cards and such. I’ve decided that my graffiti tag is XOXO.

7. My new favorite word: frippery. Frappe is pretty good too.

8. I’ve always gotten the words bizarre and bazaar mixed up, probably because Bostonians pronounce them the same.

9. Probably the only Beatle’s song I never liked was the one called Revolution Number 9 in which someone repeats over an over “Number 9 ... Number 9 ... Number 9 ... Number 9."

10. When I was a little girl I used to tell my dad that I loved him 60. I guess it was the biggest number I knew.

11. Have you ever noticed that road speed limits match the speed of life? When you’re young time passes slow from 0 -20 mph. 45 mph is pretty comfortable, like middle age. At 55 life starts going pretty fast and after 65 it all pretty much whizzes by.

12. A clock is a man-made orbit … that paces its own cage … Round like a planet … made in its image … A mechanical nightingale of gilded numbers … is an excerpt from a poem I once performed with a troupe called Women of the 7th Veil. We did improv dance to Dave Matthew’s “Two Step” while the poem was being read. Let the clock stop … It’s hypnotic talk … Let the clock stop … Let it stop … Let it stop … Turn it off.

13. Watch time STOP at Grand Central Station HERE. .

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here. The first photo is one I took at the cancelled Hillary rally of hannel 13 interviewing an attendee.

Posted by Colleen at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (37)

1. I’ve been pruning little tea poems … origami notes … petals of the Orient …light enough to float.

2. I’ve also been expressing myself with valentines via conversation heart generators (like THIS one). See the heart I made for my friend Bonnie below.

3. Recently said to my sister Sherry while expressing my happiness that she regularly visits Loose Leaf: My blog is a mass produced love letter that I send out every day!

4. After writing THIS poem about Jesus as a graffiti artist, more lines have been coming, like this: Jesus is left handed and afraid of heights … I guess it’s what novelists mean by “character development.”

5. I recently read a blog post about basketball and left a comment saying: Basketball is so over my head. (I'm 5 foot 1 inch).

6. As for the Super Bowl, I should have been rooting for the home team, but besides Tom Petty I didn’t even know who was playing.

7. Speaking of sports, in the last few days I’ve spent a good bit of time laying on pool balls and rubbing a golf ball across my foot in lieu of needles as per the order of my acupuncturist who is treating me for a back problem.

8. I was shocked to hear HERE that rabid right winger Ann Coulter would not only vote for Hillary Clinton over John McCain, she says she would campaign for her if John McCain wins the Republican presidential nomination.

9. Coulter thinks Hillary is more conservative than McCain. What does Hillary think of that? Her reaction HERE says it all.

10. Chelsea Adams, a Radford University professor of writing, has been coming to our spoken word open mics. After she recently read some poems about her love of coffee from her chapbook called Java Poems, Sally, the café owner, challenged the poets present to write coffee haiku for a future event. I told her I would use my poetic license to write about tea instead and that I probably wouldn’t be counting the number of syllables in lines. Even so, many of my teapoems from the series I’m working on have morphed into haiku in spite of myself.

11. The morphing of my teapoems into haiku reminds me of how I had no idea how to talk with an Irish accent until I read Angela’s Ashes aloud to my youngest son and suddenly found myself reading with a thick Irish brogue, which I can still do at a moment’s notice.

12. Somehow these two quotes go together (not because they were both said by Johns) and express my relief to be writing more poetry than prose this past week: Dancing is the poetry of the foot. ~John Dryden. Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking. ~John Wain

13. My love of writing little sips of poetry has led me to a new fascination with one line poems. This one by William Matthews is one of my favorites: “Premature Ejaculation”: I’m sorry this poem’s already finished.

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.

Posted by Colleen at 9:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (27)

1. Haiku is the bonsai of poetry.

2. If coffee was music it would be salsa and tea would be a flute.

3. I have a friend name Phil who plays the harmonica. I want to take a picture of him playing so I can name it the “Philharmonic.”

4. I recently joked to my husband that he wakes up like a gymnast. He literally bounces out of bed. Me? Not so much.

5. Whenever I speak of “Doug my server” I feel like calling him Hal from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey because he knows so much more about the outerspace of bloggness than I do, and I feel like I could get thrown over board at anytime.

6. Once when my brother-in-law was visiting us here in Virginia, we were at a restaurant and he asked for an order of chicken wings, but with his thick Boston accent, “order” sounded like “oughta,” and the waitress thought he was asking for “otter,” which of course was not on the menu.

7. Putting up a new post is like bait if you’re fishing for comments.

8. Check out THIS very entertaining trailer for the novel The Liar’s Diary, which my blog friend Patry (who I last blogged about HERE) wrote. She has been recovering from surgery related to cancer and has not been able to promote her book’s paperback release, so a group of bloggers got together and have been doing it for her. More about that HERE and HERE.

9. Some of my photos of downtown Floyd are posted on the Floyd Fest site HERE.

10. Taking pictures is fun partly because the ones you think will come out good often don’t and the ones you expect to be bad often aren’t.

11. I’ve never wanted to be on a game show, Survivor, Dr. Phil, or American Idol. But I DO want to be on THIS, my favorite new TV show, called Just for Laughs. It makes me laugh so hard I fall off the bed, unlike my husband who jumps.

12. I don’t want to be the lady buying fresh fish in the video. I want to be one of the butchers. But if I was the lady, I’d be taking photos and notes so that I could blog about it later.

13. I’m game for it all…except I probably couldn’t bring myself to do THIS.

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Posted by Colleen at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (31)

1. Overnight my hair reaches critical mass and I can’t go another day without a haircut.

2. Sometimes I find myself in front of the computer and I don’t know how I got here.

3. People like me who regularly burn food need a whistle on ever pot and pan in the house like the one on my tea kettle.

4. For the whole thirty minute drive to Christiansburg for my haircut I composed little sips of poems about tea, like this one: Basic black … fills an ample white pot … Tea-ball chain dangles … like a necklace on a queen.

5. I regret that when I was in high school, I never wore my hair in a ponytail. I wanted to. I wanted to look bouncy and fun like the teenagers on American Bandstand. Cheerleaders wore ponytails. So did Gidget. Read the rest and see a photo of my high school class picture in which I’m not wearing a pony tail HERE.

6. It seems that the Red Sox aren’t the only ones who have been cursed in Boston, and when it comes to presidential campaigns JFK is like Babe Ruth.

7. I’m still convinced that the Red Sox finally won the World Series for the first time after 86 years because most of the players had long hair (think Sampson).

8. I just this minute realized that curse and cures is the same word.

9. You can test your vocabulary while also donating rice through The United Nations to help end world hunger HERE.

10. Leah, the girl behind A Girl Named Guy, recently posted a podcast about her April visit to Floyd that features some familiar Floyd faces. A Girl Named Guy is a multi-media company that offers tools for positive living to conscious consumers. On TV. On the web. In print, their website says. Check it out HERE.

11. How do you look up a word when you don’t know how to spell it? Or maybe you can spell it but don’t know how to pronounce it. Check out THIS talking dictionary I found at Shepherd’s Alley.

12. About that thing I said last week: “I’m not good at telling jokes or lies, which may be why I don’t write fiction.” The truth is I just don’t have a good enough imagination to write fiction. Last Thursday Amy the Black at Creekistan did “13 Things You May Find Yourself Saying in the Future” with lines like: "That was a really good steak. See if you can get the Chef to give us a DNA sample," or "I’m going to Walmart for the sex-change surgery, again" – to which I commented, “You have a really good imagination. Is there a pill for that yet?”

13. Please don’t try THIS at home. It makes my hair stand on end.

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Posted by Colleen at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (27)

1. We didn’t wear tie dye in the 60’s. Paisley, Nehru jackets, Mexican ponchos, bell bottoms, beads, big floppy hats, and batik prints, yes; but not tie dye.

2. Although no one I knew ever said “groovy,” we did say “Wow” a lot. We said bummed out, ripped off, screwed up, and wiped out. We said hairy, heavy, crash, drag, cool, have a ball or a blast, and blow your mind; most of which we still say today.

3. My husband was home from work sick one day last week. Concerned I would catch what he had when we woke up he asked me how I felt. “I never feel good when I wake up. I could be sick and not even know it,” I answered.

4. Recently Shepherd posted a “hassle me” generator meant for those who want to be reminded of their New Year’s resolutions. I thought we should give equal time to a “compliment me” generator, so I sent him THIS, which when I first clicked on it, it said to me: "You have lovely timing.”

5. Another one HERE, called the surrealist complimenter said: I love your eyes, but only with ketchup.

6. After seeing a post about The Bodies Exhibit on somebody’s blog, I recalled a few years back when a group of us from Floyd saw photographer’s Frank Cordelle’s impressive Century Project exhibit in Blacksburg. It’s a "chronological series of nude photographic portraits of more than one hundred women and girls from the moment of birth to nearly a hundred years of age. A diverse group of photographs comprising women of many ages, shapes, sizes, and life experiences is presented in this exquisitely disarming project. Most of the images are accompanied by moving statements written by the women themselves.”

7. I’m not good at telling jokes or lies, which may be why I don’t write fiction.

8. Although I think truth is stranger and more interesting than fiction, I don’t enjoy many biographical movies because I’d rather see the documentary.

9. Most people don’t realize that it takes energy to be able to fall asleep and that people who are exhausted rarely sleep well. The lowest point I have occasionally reached in my issues with fatigue is when I’m too tired to get a massage. It takes energy to receive one.

10. My favorite word carved in cement is on Draper St. in Blacksburg and is the word “Word.”

11. Said to my friend Mara during a recent phone conversation where I was complaining about not writing much poetry these days: Writing poetry is like knitting and writing prose is like using a sewing machine.

12. The drug pushers are at it again: Mara recently received a notice in the mail that she had an opportunity to win a free IPOD if she and her daughter got a flu shots (which still contain mercury, second only to uranium in toxicity). The deal also came with a guilt trip that said, “Others are counting on you. Take care of yourselves and your loved ones.”

13. Going out to hunt last night, after coming home empty handed the last time he did, Joe says, “I’m going to give it another shot.”

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here. This is my 116th TT.

Posted by Colleen at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (27)

1. I just recently figured out – while dressing in front of the woodstove on a frigid morning – why the character in “Twas the Night before Christmas” slept with a cap on. He was cold.

2. I’m so glad I live in a place where you still see smoke coming out of chimneys.

3. Worlds most bizarre statues via lifecrusier Here.

4. World’s most unlikely friendship HERE. (Both this and #3 are really worth looking at.)

5. Do you ever get the feeling on a slow day that everyone has given up blogging as a new year’s resolution?

6. I just love this, by Ani Difranco: "So I walk like I'm on a mission, 'cuz that's the way I groove. I've got more and more to do, I've got less and less to prove. It took me too long to realize that I don't take good pictures 'cuz I have the kind of beauty that moves..." Read about Ani at Floyd Fest HERE.

7. Watching the presidential primary coverage recently I realized that there’s a part of me that doesn’t trust anyone running for President. Why would anyone want that much power and stress?

8. Watching the PBS show “Pioneers in Televison,” I noticed that the men being interviewed – Dick Van Dyke and Andy Griffin – looked much better than the woman being interviewed – Mary Tyler Moore and Marlo Thomas – because the men hadn’t had plastic surgery.

9. I have the kind of husband who doesn’t notice for weeks if I hang a new picture or change the curtains. But he notices what counts right away, like when I get a new bra.

10. Someone on the Diane Rehm show yesterday referred to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as poetry vs. prose.

11. I’m starting a favorite word list. So far I have: Baffled, lollygag, discombobulated, pesto, and muffin. What’s yours?

12. Wearing my new beet red shiny silk pajamas that my husband gave me for Christmas, I say, “I feel like present.” He answers, “And your smile is the bow."

13. The days are shorter and we sleep more in winter. So how does anything get done?

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Posted by Colleen at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (32)

1. We hadn’t recovered from our rowdy community Thanksgiving game of Celebrity, in which I spelled Carl Yastrzemski’s name wrong and didn’t know who Doris Lessing, was, so for Christmas we played Taboo. How Carl Yastrzemski fits into my life is HERE.

2. Why does food always taste better when eaten over the stove directly out of the pan?

3. I got invited to a New Years Eve party in part because the host knew I could be counted on to get some dancing started.

4. "Is it casual or glitter?" I asked him.

5. Ingredients for a good story, or things that make my job as storyteller easier: 1. have a webpage or a brochure where I can get some background. 2. Invite me to immerse myself in a related activity. 3. Give me a few fresh quotes. ... Mix well and pour.

6. How a poem is like cake: Don’t use a mix or stale ingredients … Don’t look in the oven too much when it’s cooking … or eat too much at one sitting … Don’t over-sweeten or over-stir … A baker and a poet are both concerned with flavor … It’s all about consistency and knowing when it’s done.

7. Norman Mailer who died this year said, “When you write a book you try to create a spell. You either succeed or you don’t.”

8. Bevery Sills, who also died this year, said, “When I look back over my life I would rather say ‘I shouldn’t have done that’ than ‘I should have done that.”’

9. The closest chance there is that I could vote Republican HERE.

10. I didn’t end up going to the party. I spend the better part of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day avoiding starting a story I had signed up to write. By the afternoon of New Year’s Day, I finally got started. It’s about a thirteen year old homeschooled girl who composes her own electronica music and has produced two CDs. Coming soon ...

11. Dressing in front of the woodstove, which I had to do this morning because it was so cold, is like taking a shower where you have to keep turning to get the warm heat on you, section by section. I’d much rather take a bath, like I’d rather it was summer.

12. My crazy window smashing cardinal came back, waking me up too early with its futile attempts scaring away its own reflection. Right now I have a 20 inch plastic owl in one window and a 20 inch Folk Art Santa in the other. So far it’s working.

13. “A new year is like a birthday. It takes me awhile to get used to the number and to embrace it.” I said that.

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here. This is my 114th TT.

Posted by Colleen at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (28)

1. My youngest son Dylan and his wife, Alexis, are expecting a baby in May. I can’t seem to say the words grandmother or grandchild yet (my first!), so I’m calling the baby my G-Whiz kid.

2. I told them that I would come down to Roanoke where they live to baby-sit whenever I can. The only two things I require are an internet connection and a baby stroller.

3. I lean towards believing there is a rhyme to the reason of life, but other times I think it’s all free verse.

4. I almost forgot how to blog over the Christmas holiday. Finally the evening of the day after Christmas I started to visit my blog friends again to see what they had been up to, sort of like when we were kids and would walk around the neighborhood the day after Christmas to see what kind of presents our friends had got.

6. Sometimes even my husband has to catch up with what’s going with me by reading my blog, especially when he’s in San Francisco helping to facilitate a teen meditation retreat like he is right now. XO.

7. My oldest son, Josh, and I just watched the Martin Scorsese's documentary, “No Direction Home,” about Bob Dylan. We had a good laugh remembering the time when Josh was 13 and I tried to turn him on to Dylan by tuning into a show he was on. It was during the phase when Dylan’s singing was shot and he garbled a song as I explained what an icon he was. Josh thought I was out of my mind. “Maybe he’s trying act like singing bad is the new good singing,” I said referring to the rebel trendsetter aspect of Dylan.

8. I was happy to find two of my all time favorite Bob Dylan songs in one Youtube video HERE, but I did have to wonder about Dylan’s choice of hat because it looks more like something Camilla Parker Bowles would wear.

9. Speaking of hats, my blogging friend Paul has a hat blog and I’m featured today wearing the leopard skin pillbox hat inspired by a third favorite Dylan song and by Deana at Friday Night Fish Fry (who really has one whereas I was only trying mine on). See HERE.

10. I wish President Bush would have an affair … I wish he'd take off his black pointed cowboy boots ... and look at the moon more often … And then I wish he'd wake up … and be inflicted with what Jim Carey had … in the movie "Liar Liar" … My Dream For President Bush poem is scheduled to be broadcast on The Monitor, KPFT/Pacifica, in Houston on Sunday from 6 pm to 7 pm CST. The host of the show must have found the poem on the internet. The roster of past guests on the show is impressive and includes: Daniel Ellsberg, Molly Ivins, Seymour Hersh, Arianna Huffington, Helen Thomas, Gore Vidal, William Rivers Pitt, Howard Zinn, Scott Ritter and others. You can read the rest of the poem HERE and HERE is the radio show’s website.

11. I’m a new Sufjan Stevens fan. I discovered him when I went to Blue Mountain Mama's site and she had several Christmas songs of his downloaded on her blog. My favorite is called “The Worst Christmas Ever.” You can hear him sing it HERE.

12. Christmas Caroling in Angels in the Attic Thrift Shop by some of my Floyd friends is HERE.

13. Is it possible to play anything but a happy song with a banjo? Do you know what the difference is between a fiddle and a violin?

Post notes: Thirteen Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here. This is my 113th TT. The photo above is of my son Dylan’s stepdaughter coloring at our house on Christmas Day.

Posted by Colleen at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (30)

1. I have a fantasy poetry troupe called The Beat Mix, a play on the word beatniks.

2. My poem in which a blender figures in prominently is HERE.

3. Santa has a blog HERE. “One Hundred Things About Santa” is HERE.

4. My Asheville potter son, Josh, just got blogged by someone other than me HERE.

5. I wonder what kind of scrambled eggs eggnog would make.

6. I love the idea of hats but think of them more as props than clothes.

7. A blatant typo in the middle of a post that sits there for days before I see it is equivalent or worse than going to high school with a big zit on your face.

8. I sneeze loudly, yawn loudly, and stomp up the stairs loudly. Last night in bed I tossed and turned so loudly that I woke myself up.

9. I feel discriminated against when it comes to bathrobes. I like pink as much as the next girl, but I want a new terrycloth bathrobe and all the women’s ones are in pale pastel colors. A pale colored robe wouldn’t last a week with me before it was covered in grime and stains. Why do men get all the dark vibrant blue, green, and purple colors?

10. I was up bright and early on Monday morning to roll a guy whose midriff was showing around on a floor and blow air into a dummy. Can you guess what I was doing?

11. “Colleen, do you know how Christmas came to be called X-mas?” my friend Chris recently asked. “I don’t know, but I hope it doesn’t mean something like X-husband.” Of course, I was googling X-mas as soon as I could get my hands on a computer and discovered that: “The word "Christ" and its compounds, including "Christmas,” have been abbreviated for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern "Xmas" was commonly used. “Christ" was often written as "XP" or "Xt"; there are references in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as far back as 1021 AD.

12. I also found out that eggnog adopted the nog part of its name from the word noggin, a Middle English phrase used to describe a small, wooden, carved mug used to serve alcohol in.

13. I use my real name on my blog because why would I want my alter ego instead of the real me to be the one to benefit from all the great friendships, connections, and opportunities that come via blogging ?

Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13's are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here. This is my 112th TT.

Posted by Colleen at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (36)

1. What’s up with hunters that wear camouflage clothes, topped off with a bright blaze orange hat? Do they want to be seen or not?

2. I can tell it’s Christmas when I drive by a bunch of tires holding a tarp over hay bales and mistake them for wreaths.

3. At the book signing event I attended last weekend, I was snapping a photo of David St. Lawrence with his camera while he was instructing me how to use it. “Hold it like you would a gun,” he said. “Yeah, like I've ever held a gun!” I answered.

4. I want President Bush to have a dream like the one that Ebenezer Scrooge had… I want him to be haunted by the ghosts of Iraqi children who cry out … But mankind is your business … After I posted my “Dream for President Bush” poem last week (written in November 2002) it got picked up at Crooks and Liars, creating an increase of email comments and traffic on my blog. The last time I checked over there it had 152 comments. Half a dozen other political blogs also picked it up.

5. Dicken’s Christmas Carol is to Christmas what Arlo Guthrie’s Alice Restaurant is to Thanksgiving.

6. Politically correct Santa can’t smoke a pipe anymore, and there’s talk of him having to lose weight and not saying HO HO because some people think it sounds too much like the slang for “Whore.” On top of that, I saw a story on the nightly news a few nights ago about people making trips to the North Pole to see it before it’s gone.

7. The fact that Joy is in the word Jolly is not lost on me.

8. Could sputtering be an alternate plural of puttering the way slack could be for lack, or the way pets can become pests when there are too many of them?

9. Another sign of global warming: Joe and I raking leaves on Sunday instead of shoveling snow.

10. Does passion fruit flirt? Are elderberries old? Have you ever poured a watermelon and drank it by the gallon? So I brought my Fruit Loops poem to my writer’s workshop. After reading it out loud, one of the members joked, “What has happened to you?” The group renamed the poem “A Slamming Fruit Jam.” I was reminded that I left out persimmons and someone wondered if a pumpkin should be considered a fruit. I rewrote the ending HERE. (And yes, June, I will be reading it at the Spoken Word Open Mic this Saturday at the Café Del Sol.)

11. Apparently, Carly Simon revealed to Dick Ebersol who she was singing about in the song “You’re So Vain.” Ebersol won a lunch with Carly Simon in an auction for charity in which she agreed to reveal who it was. She allowed him to give the rest of us one clue. He has an E in his name. Believe it or not I learned about this while researching fruit for the poem mentioned above because. And if you know the words to the song you will know what fruit was mentioned in the song.

12. Have you ever noticed that whenever Oprah breaks